Contributor: Rabindra

Translated by: Mika Halpin H.

Article in Indonesia: LINK

Soon, Indonesia will commemorate the Youth Pledge on 28 October. One ideal proclaimed in the Pledge is “Bahasa Indonesia, the language of unity”. Do you know that Bahasa Indonesia, the Republic of Indonesia’s lingua franca, is studied in at least 40 countries?

Forty countries at the minimum in this world put Bahasa Indonesia in their education system, ranging from elementary to tertiary level education, according to Senior Lecturer of Faculty of Linguistic, University of Hasanuddin (Unhas), Dr. Aspar Rahman. Seeing such phenomenon, Mr. Rahman argues that Bahasa Indonesia is becoming more popular amongst global citizens.

According to him, as a proof how attractive Bahasa Indonesia is to foreigners, in October 2004, an international conference on teaching Bahasa Indonesia for non-native speaker was held in the University of Hasanuddin. Mr. Rahman also said due to the increasing number of people learning Bahasa Indonesia, the language that emerged from the Youth Pledge possesses the potential to be equal with other languages as an international language. Through Bahasa Indonesia, global citizens are able to get closer with Indonesian culture and people.

He also argues that cross-cultural understanding might emerges through the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia to foreigners. Countries with the most intense activities promoting Bahasa Indonesia as a foreign language at their local schools are Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia.

If foreigners are so excited in learning Bahasa Indonesia, we as Indonesians should absorb their excitement in learning our own language. Such a shame if we can master foreign language so well but abandon our own language.

Anyway, I came across an interesting posting that might make us more proud of Indonesia. Make a visit ;)